


Mordin Solus: The Little Picture

by Ejnox



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Freeform, Mass Effect - Freeform, Mass Effect 2, Minor Character Death, One Shot, omega - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22059307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ejnox/pseuds/Ejnox
Summary: Mordin Solus stumbles upon a half-dead human while scavenging abandoned apartments on Omega and tries desperately to save his life.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Mordin Solus: The Little Picture

The house was a complete and utter mess.

Furniture had been thrown around the apartment, cabinets and closets were all opened, personal belongings ranging from combs to jewellery were lying on the floor carelessly. Humans who lived there before the plague must’ve left as soon as the first revenge killings begun. They took only the most important items; maybe they hoped to comeback to Omega one day?

“Not important” muttered Mordin, taking a step into the apartment. “Focus.”

He surveyed the place with his eyes and localized something that looked like a bathroom. Humans liked to keep their medicine in bathrooms. He wondered why.

Their skin not squishy enough; a cut during showering unlikely. Perhaps…

“Focus.”  
He crossed the floor not caring about stepping on items cluttered beneath his feet and entered the small bathroom, glanced on the walls and reached his hand to open a small, white cabinet with a red cross painted on it.

“Yes, good” said Mordin while examining the contents of the cabinet. “One dose of medi-gel, bandages, antibiotics, painkillers; primitive, but will do.”

He reached for his bag when heard a cluttering sound by the entrance to the apartment. And then another one. His hand stopped mid-air and went for his gun.

Mordin glued his back to the wall separating the bathroom from the rest of the condo and peaked behind his cover, overseeing the entrance. He squeezed his fingers on the gun he was holding, stepped back, took a shallow breath.

“Leave” he told the shadowy figure in the doorframe.

No response. Only heavy, wheezing breathing. Like a rustling paper bag.

Mordin, keeping calm despite the hit of adrenaline delivered to his body, took a step into the living room, pointing his blaster into the shadow-covered human figure standing still.

“Leave or I will shoot” warned him Mordin one last time.

The human said nothing at first. After standing there for a second or two he took one clumsy step forward, breathed loudly and begged: “Help”, before collapsing to the floor.

Mordin stood still for a moment, as the sequence of events took even him a couple of seconds of analysis, holstered his gun and approached the man quickly, glanced at him and took a step over his body to seal the door to the house. Only then did he come back and crouched next to him.

“Bullet holes. Marks. Torture perhaps? Breathing, alive. Chances of survival low.” He turned away, looking for a surface he could lay him on. “Will attempt anyway.”

Fortunately for him, the man was thin and minuscule. Not that hard to lift up and move.

Twenty years? Young for a human. Short, too. Unarmed. No threat to anyone.

Animals.

He laid the young man on the relatively clean coffee table, put his hands to his side, allowed his chin to rest comfortably. There he could examine the three bullet holes more closely.

There were two in his right side – both looked like exit holes, but he didn’t have time to turn him on his stomach - and one in his neck. The last one seemed mortal at first, but the shot missed aorta by a millimetre. Survivable. The other did not look as bad, but could be dangerous if not treated correctly – which they obviously will not, since he only had one dose of medi-gel to spare.

Side wound could be mortal; neck would definitely mortal if not treated. All wounds fresh. Blood still pumping. Have to stop the bleeding.   
Whoever shot him – close.

One thing at the time.

Mordin rushed to the bathroom, grabbed the little bag of medi-gel, took a piece of cloth hanging by the shower, made it wet under the running water and came back to his patient. With precision and calmness only present when he was either saving or taking a life, he gently cleaned the wound with the wet piece of fabric and applied the medi-gel. The bag made a quiet hiss and the gel has spread over the hole in the boy’s neck. The young man groaned weakly.

“Awake, are you?” asked Mordin, examining the process of the gel closing the wound. It was working fine; didn’t appear to be past the date. “Medi-gel. Does wonders. Military grade medicine, though. Expensive. Not many civilians possess it. We’re lucky. Don’t talk. Let the wound heal.”

The boy opened his eyes gently and looked at him with infirm hesitation. Mordin took a second to stare back and the human.

No. He might’ve looked at Mordin, but it was the void he was staring into.

“Only one dose, though” said Mordin backing out into the toilet. “Two more bullet holes, will have to do with more… primitive ways.”

He went through the available supplies again, shuffled the boxes and just took everything there was to take. He came back to the boy, threw everything to the floor and went for his own pocket, taking out a scalpel he usually carried.

“Have to cut clothes to get to the wounds” he explained the human. 

The boy just looked at him, breathing with this awful, screeching sound to it.

It was more complicated than he predicted at first, as he had to get rid of a leather jacket the boy was wearing, before he could cut through the fabric material of his shirt. As he struggled to take the jacket off as gently as he could, he mumbled:

“Drell all wear the same suit. More efficient.”

When the jacket was finally off he hastily, yet precisely, cut his shirt with his scalpel and revealed the two wounds. In the meantime the boy coughed blood. Mordin glanced at him quickly, wanting to comfort him, but the holes needed his attention.

One of them has hit the flesh. It wasn’t much of a hole; it looked more like the shot had carved out a piece of his body. Nothing too major. The second one was more of a problem: the position of the exit wound, and the dark colour off the blood pumped out of the wound, suggested that the shot might have gone through the liver.

“Will do my best. You do yours.”

How many livers do humans have? One… I think.

“First things first” proclaimed Mordin, cleaning the wound with a wet rug. “Can you move your hands?”

The boy said nothing but his hand twitched and faintly soared into the air.

“Good. Good, good, good…” muttered Mordin, reaching for a pack of gazes on the floor and opening it sharply. “Need you to hold it on the wound. Keep the pressure. Understand?”

Again, no answer – but the human followed his instructions, taking the gaze into his fingers and smacking it onto the hole in his side. He groaned with pain.

“Will give you painkillers later, now how to hold you up, see your back. Ready? One… two… three!”

The boy roared in pain while sitting clumsily. Mordin gave him a quick smile and stretched his neck to look at his back, to see the entry wounds.

And he froze. 

He did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just stopped right there, in the moment, hypnotized by what he was seeing. It took him a couple of seconds to come back to the reality. He turned to the boy and found his eyes.

“What’s your name?” he asked gently.

The human looked at him with confusion.

“It’s alright. You can speak.”

“Jason” said the boy. Mordin could barely hear him.

“Jason. I’m… sorry. I killed you” told him Mordin, trying his best to remain the cold professional he liked to consider himself to be. “I should’ve… I should’ve… I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

“What are you…” started Jason, but was interrupted by the blood he coughed again. This time there was much more of it.

“When you fell in I… So much blood everywhere…” Mordin had difficulty finding his words. Didn’t happen often. “No time to look properly. I had to take care of the wounds I saw. Turning you on stomach seemed like losing precious seconds. But I was wrong. Three more holes in your back. No exit holes. One in your lung. I made a mistake. And you will die because of it.”

How much time has gone by since Jason fell in through the main door? Around two minutes? The wounds couldn’t have been inflicted longer than three minutes before that. Giving him just a handful more to live.

Mistake. Mistake. I’ve made a mistake. Error. Justified. Lots of emotions. Little time. 

No. No. Not justified. Failed to save a live. My fault. My fault. My fault.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

“I’m sorry.”

Jason said nothing. He laid slowly on his back, looking into the celling and wheezing. The wheezing. A hole it the lung. Of course. Of course.

Tear appeared in the boys eye, crawling its way out through the dirt on his cheek.

There must have been something he could do. No. The wasn’t. He should leave the boy alone. He deserved this much.

*  
*  
*  
*

Then someone banged on the door.

“Open up!”

Mordin slowly closed Jason’s eyes, stood up and with lack of haste, unusual for him, he came to the door.

“Open the door you motherfu-“

Mordin clicked a button on his omnitool and the door opened with a loud hiss.

“-cker!... Oh” exclaimed a Blue Son’s merch pointing a rifle at Mordin’s face.

They stood like that for a couple of seconds, looking each other in the eyes. Two more mercs were standing behind the turian with the weapon in his hands. The turian lowered his rifle slowly, still analysing Mordin with his eyes.

“Where’s the human?” he asked bluntly.

“Why shoot him?” returned a question Mordin.

The merc took a step back, glanced on his comrades and looked at Mordin confused.

“He was a human” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Mordin said nothing.

First shot damaged the merc’s shields; the second broke them; third pierced his brain.

As the turian was falling to the ground, the sound of gunshots filled the air and the second merc was shot two times, and dropped dead before he could even move a muscle.

The third went for his gun. He was fast.

But Mordin was faster.

The salarian holstered his gun, coldly overlooking the three warm bodies. He turned his head to the house behind him and sealed the door shut, leaving Jason’s body safe inside.

What a waste of life, he thought, while walking away.

He had to hurry. He still had more apartments to search for supplies.


End file.
